It's the end of a decade... Abba

Today is my last Monday as a forty-something.  I'm as excited as a child that on Thursday I face the next 10 years even more liberated and liberating.  But I've been reflecting on the year, and the decade, and thought it time to blog again.

When I turned 40 in 2003, Great Chief White Hair took me for a day out in London.  Young Master was then 4 1/2 and it was a school day, so he didn't come with us.  We flew on the London Eye, had a very posh dinner in the very posh restaurant in the OXO Tower, and went to see a theatre performance of The Hobbit which had a cast of about 5 people.  It was a magical day.

Shortly after that, my GP told me that after 40 my body would break down - how right he was!

2003 was also the year that I bought my first computer.  My father's daughter, I've always loved electronic gadgets, and I often think of him when I'm tapping away at the screen, remembering the hours he used to spend teaching himself to program his first computer.  He taught me how to use MS-DOS to get it to tell the time - but I never mastered anything more technical than that.  All I remember now is "if A = B, run like hell" or something.  Taking my own machine out of its many boxes, plugging it all in, and expecting it to explode as I put the wrong plug in the wrong socket - so exciting.  Of all the life-changing events that happened in this decade, getting a computer was probably one of the most subtle.  It should have had fanfares and drum-rolls or something.

I could do a year-by-year documentary, but I'm not going to.  Although the scales would probably still tip towards the good rather than the bad, it's been.... an interesting decade.  I'm still making the same mistakes, but I've learned far more about who I am, and about the amazing men I share my life with, than in any other period of my life. 

So what about 2013?  It's been another interesting year.  By interesting I mean that it's had good and bad but it's never been boring.  I am somewhat more debilitated now than I was at the start of the year, but then I have degenerative problems so that's to be expected.  But I've been blessed with the love and support and friendship of so many wonderful people. 

This year I lost a cousin who meant the world to me.  I couldn't go to his funeral, couldn't even express my sympathy for my cousins in words.  He had lost his teenage daughter in January, and the loss within his own family is unimaginable.  I remember Paul as one of my only childhood playmates, when my cousins used to visit with my grandmother; I remember the time she won the pools - but he'd lost the ticket.  I remember visiting Nanna Annie and Paul roaring up on his motorbike...

It's been a difficult year in many ways.  Some of it will carry forward to next year; some of it can be thankfully left behind without a backwards glance.  But it's also been a huge year.  A year of love, laughter, peace and fulfillment.  What more can I ask?